I've been coming off my meds because I'm taking part in a clinical trial of an enhancement to Cymbalta, an antidepressant that I've had good success with but that is too expensive for me since I do not have prescription insurance, and I have to dry out (as it were) from my old regimen before I begin the new. On Monday I begin taking the new meds, but today is Friday and I stopped taking meds last Sunday and on waking up this morning I could feel immediately the desperation that comes with being med-free, the frantic search for a mental place that doesn't hurt. Today is Friday: I dread these next several days. I hope writing about it will help.
What would heaven be like? I read people's posts on Facebook, hear people speaking about heaven after someone has died, and they don't speak of pearly gates and streets of gold. They don't speak of angels with wings and harps and St. Peter ("Saint Who?" says Butthead) checking off names. Instead, they speak quite simply of the grandest family reunion one can imagine, one where all the family attends, even back to those funny-looking relatives in the antique black-and-whites that used to hang on grandparents' walls, but really they're longing for more immediate family, usually grandparents and parents and themselves and children and, maybe, grandchildren. And they don't speak of doing anything together: simply being together is enough.
Funny thing, but our life here on the mountain comes close to that. My mom and dad, my brothers and their wives, my nephew, two sets of cousins, we all live together on the same ten acre plot. My daughter is nearby in Birmingham, my son was until this past June when he moved to Bronxville, New York. My grandmother was until she died in April at the grand old age of 95. We see each other every day, we eat together each evening, we watch football on Saturdays and Sundays and Mondays and this year sometimes on Thursdays, actually we can watch football every day but Tuesday (they re-run the Alabama games on Wednesday). So listening to and reading how a lot of folks envision heaven, you could say that up here on the mountain we've got a taste of heaven on earth.
But I've got two problems with that. First, I'm depressed, way depressed today, so I don't tend to see the good things right in front of me, I don't tend to give the good any lasting credence, as if the good is an aberration in an existence where bleakness is the norm, where gloom is palpable and real. I tend to see each relative and think, "How long until they die?" I watched my older brother yesterday walking his dog (a greyhound retired from the track) way across the field about to disappear into the path in the woods that leads down by the pond, his back to me and the dog sniffing the way, and I thought, "That's the last time I'll see him." My depression - and I can only speak of mine, no one else's - tends to neglect the present, no matter how good it is (and it is very good), and anticipate the inescapable future when I or they will certainly die. So I don't feel my life as a foretaste of that great gettin'-up mornin' soon to be.
Second, I don't believe in that heaven at all. Sure, it's a comforting thought that one day we'll be reunited with all our loved ones, this time never to part, always to be together, though I find such beliefs short on details on what we'll do with all our time together instead of just be. But I get the thought: that I'll see my grandmother again someday, not like the last time I saw her on her deathbed, but in her prime, sharp as a whip, I'd love for that to be. But I just don't believe it. I don't believe in an afterlife at all. So for this reason, too, I don't see our life here - good though it is - as a mild foretaste of that truer, eternal life that we will all someday share, a mere shadow, Paul says, of a greater reality. Instead, I see this as a brief time of intimacy, of sharing daily each other's life, that we live under a cloud of destiny that could descend on us any day now.
Nihilism is the technical term for what I feel (and my nihilism is more a feeling than a system of thought). "Nihil" means "nothingness, void," but nihilism tends to see our life here as ultimately mortal and finite, untranscendable, no afterlife or eternity or immortality, just a brief time of existence before which was nothing (excepting those mother and father parts that combined to make me) and after which will also be nothing (at least as far as "I" am concerned - my son and daughter will hopefully go on long after me). Same thing goes for this earth and all that is in it, for our sun and solar system, perhaps even our galaxy (though I have difficulty conceiving that such a huge thing can ever fully pass away). And I guess my nihilism takes the form of belief, too, like so many of our beliefs that grow out of feelings: I have no data to base it on, I just feel this way so strongly I have to think the world is made this way.
But being nihilistic doesn't mean I'm not faithful. Some folks have assumed that about me: since I don't believe in heaven, I don't believe at all. But that's not true at all. I do believe in God, I do trust that God loves me, I just don't think I get eternal life out of the deal. As a Christian, I do believe that Jesus accomplished something in his life that offers me a life of meaning and worship and service, a life that I can live in spite of my conviction that this life is all I've got, so that my life can be one of giving without expecting anything in return, of serving without expecting to be served. I guess you can call my nihilism a faithful nihilism, if that doesn't sound too contradictory. And I guess I have to ask you this question: if you did not get eternal life from your faith, would you believe?
There, I do feel better, much better than I did this morning while I was huddling in the bed gritting my teeth and flinging my head from side to side fretting that Monday will never get here (not to mention the lag between taking an antidepressant and having the benefits kick in, sometimes two weeks to a month after beginning though I hope I get a boost way sooner than that). The craft of writing helps: though this is only a small thing, writing so short a blog entry is really an act of creation in which I add something new to the world, and that helps. But the cognitive work of writing helps, too: to communicate to you what I feel and think means I have to feel and think through them, and it helps me to see myself type these things openly, to encapsulate these thoughts in letters and words and sentences. The process clarifies. And I'm not left only feeling nihilistic, I'm left feeling a little hopeful, too, feeling faithful. Thank you for reading.
